Painting With Light

During our month together in Gokarna – a little beach town about 3 hours South of Goa – my dear friends, Oliver and Joni and I did a lot of collaborative art. Mostly, we'd sketch throughout the day, switching papers between the 3 of us, each adding a bit at a time. It was incredibly inspiring and creatively nourishing.

We eventually had the brilliant idea to experiment with drawing together in an entirely different way. With the beach as our backdrop, Oli and Joni illustrated with colorful lights while I did my best to record their movements on camera. Having no tripod with me, it took a lot of tries before we achieved anything good. Most of it was just scribbled swashes of blurred light, but – towards the end – we'd found our flow.

These are my favorites from our final session. In the first one, I love how the sand around them is blurred from their movements. I also find it quite hilarious that Oli managed to create a creepy-looking, ghosted image of his face on his abdomen. The second one feels so calm in comparison, and – to my eye – looks much like a skull and brain, complete with ears and a spinal cord.